Archive Note
Mai (c. 1751 to c. 1779) embarked from Huahine in 1773 aboard HMS Adventure during Cook's second voyage and reached London in October 1774, where the naturalist Sir Joseph Banks introduced him to British society and he was received by George III. His tattooed hands and back were widely observed, and Sir Joshua Reynolds painted a celebrated full-length portrait of him around 1776, shown at the Royal Academy in 1776 and later jointly acquired by the National Portrait Gallery, London, and the J. Paul Getty Museum in 2023. He returned to the Pacific on Cook's third voyage, settling on Huahine in 1777 and dying there around 1779 to 1780. His reception in London helped shift European attitudes to tattooing from criminal stigma toward fascination; portraiture shows hand and back tattoos specifically, not the full-body coverage sometimes claimed.